Congress attempts reinvention with Bharat Jodo Yatra and a new president

The crisis in the Indian National Congress is not one of organisation or leadership alone.

Rahul Gandhi in the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Raichur district, Karnataka, on October 23. | Photo Credit: PTI

The Indian National Congress has faced three major challenges in the current political conjuncture defined by the growing influence of the Right and the polarisation engendered by it. The party’s problems can be summed up and looked at through three principal verticals: leadership crisis, organisational decay, and ideological ambiguity. How has the Congress fared in addressing these three challenges?

The Congress party has been in a terminal decline since its great defeat in the 2014 general election. One of the world’s oldest parties, which once acted as a big tent of ideas and persuasions, led a mass movement for freedom against colonial rule, and came to define the country’s framework for a democratic secular polity, is in deep crisis. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not only trounced the Congress in successive elections, it has also systematically delegitimised the core ideals that the party represents.

A Congress Working Committee meeting in progress at the AICC headquarters on February 28. | Photo Credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

With ideas like secularism regularly attacked and welfarism appropriated by the BJP, the Congress began to lose the key elements of its political mobilisation strategies. Firm in its belief that it was still the default party of India (or the “default operating system”, as Rahul Gandhi once described it), most of its key leaders did not realise that the country had witnessed a rightward shift—politically, socially, and economically—which squeezed the space for liberal centrist politics. The decline was accelerated by the staggering defeat in the 2019 election which precipitated considerable discontent and rampant factionalism in States such as Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, and Chhattisgarh. Several prominent leaders quit the party in search of greener pastures and joined the BJP.

The Congress crisis is structural, and not one of organisation or leadership alone, as is commonly believed. Moreover, this crisis is not unique to the party. Social democracy and social democratic parties across the globe are in a crisis. In the Indian context, this crisis is exacerbated by the prevalence of entrenched social hierarchies and overlapping social and economic inequalities. The rise of the Right and neoliberal policies, which all parties accept, has blurred economic differences between them, making the task of political mobilisation for the opposition more challenging than before, and more so for a centrist party such as the Congress.

A non-Gandhi as president

After a long spell of drift and doing precious little to make its presence felt in the opposition space, there are signs of movement in the Congress. “The elephant has woken up and surprised many,” proclaimed one of its central leaders. One major sign of change is the transfer of power to a non-Gandhi president for the first time in 24 years.

The election of Mallikarjun Kharge is indeed a breakthrough moment for the party, revealing stirrings of change, but it is too early to assess its impact in improving the electoral prospects of the Congress at the national level. Nonetheless, there is a widespread belief that the Congress presidency under a non-Gandhi will help rejuvenate the party and consolidate a broad liberal, secular opposition to take on the BJP. Hence, in the public discourse around the Congress elections, many people demanded that the Gandhis stay away from the Congress and give an opportunity to others to run the party.

However, it is also crucial to remember that the Congress party’s functioning over the years and internal dynamics depend to a great deal on the presence of the Gandhis, who act as a glue for the party which would have otherwise split into multiple factions. Most importantly, the three Gandhis are the only people who will assuredly not join the BJP, while most others can and have done so already, or are waiting in the departure lounge for power and patronage from the ruling dispensation.

It is amply clear that the deep-seated problems of the party cannot be solved by leadership change alone. The Congress crisis runs much deeper than family rule and the media assessment of Congress maladies. At the organisational level, there is a complete collapse of the Congress system established in the early years of post-independent India. The Congress organisation has withered away, with the party lacking in local leaders and workers to conduct ground-level campaigns. This has resulted in organisational immobility and stagnation.

The three Gandhis are the only people who will assuredly not join the BJP. | Photo Credit: Manvender Vashist Lav

At present, the top decision-making bodies are occupied by leaders who have not won any elections, have no grassroots connect, and are mainly from the Rajya Sabha. No discernible effort has been made in the last eight years to change this. This crisis grew exponentially due to the party’s complete inattention to organisational issues during its ten years in power under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

Ideological hurdles

On the ideological front, the Congress has been unable to navigate the divisive politics of the Hindu Right, based on the appeals to ethnic identity, stoking historical vendetta, and exploiting group fear and anger. Significantly, no other national or regional party has been able to expand without engaging in a politics of convenience. One party that has done so is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has pragmatically tried to accommodate Hindu sensibilities, especially by maintaining a safe distance from minorities and their anxieties and insecurities. But for parties like the Congress, which competes with the BJP at the national level, a middle position is hard to sustain in practice; the AAP has managed to do this at the State level, but at the expense of principled politics.

Rahul Gandhi at the Gangabhavani Temple in Adoni, Telangana, during the yatra. He has raised important questions on democracy, pluralism, and so on, but has failed to cut ice with the Hindu vote bank. | Photo Credit: SUBRAMANYAM U

Significantly, Rahul Gandhi has emerged as the most robust ideological opponent of the RSS/BJP. He has raised important questions on democracy, constitutionalism, and pluralism, but he has failed to cut ice with the Hindu vote bank, which the BJP has so assiduously created and nurtured through a false sense of victimhood and resentment. The well-oiled machinery of the current regime, supported by huge money power, media control, the use and misuse of state agencies and institutions to deflate and devalue opponents by slapping corruption charges against all and sundry, and an all-encompassing organisation like the RSS and its affiliates, makes the task of winning elections by any party at the national level very difficult.

This task is made more difficult when people are mesmerised by visions of strongman leadership as embodied by Narendra Modi. The ideological and economic critique of the regime is further neutralised by the opiate of religion, especially in the Hindi-Hindu heartland.

The Congress party’s foremost task is to build a political narrative that has traction with the electorate. As a big-tent party, the Congress has tried to present a political template of pluralism, diversity, and accommodation. But there are few takers for pluralism in political times as fevered as these, making an effective rebuttal of majoritarian politics and Hindu nationalism a big challenge. The lack of a cadre base and communication strategy has proved to be a major weakness in this regard.

Surprisingly, the Congress seems reluctant to tell its own story, leave alone broadcast its legacy and achievements. The party did not publicise its achievements or highlight its distinctive approach under the UPA. The UPA provided a social model for development based on a rights-based framework, combined with market-led economics, to cater to the marginalised as well as the middle classes.

The Congress seldom highlights its success, for example in lifting nearly 140 million people out of poverty and giving protection to the marginalised through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the National Food Security Act, the Right to Education Act, and the Right to Information Act, and so on. Despite the stiff opposition from various quarters, this model served the country well and proved to be an electoral success for the Congress in the 2009 elections.

Rahul Gandhi’s anti-corporate rhetoric suggests a shift in the party’s economic thinking—a shift from its espousal for three decades of economic liberalisation coupled with welfarism towards a greater emphasis on policies of distributive justice and social security schemes, such as the NYAY (Nyuntam Aay Yojana, or minimum income scheme). But beyond this rhetoric, the Congress has to find ways of tackling institutionalised inequities and inequalities which have grown hugely in the last few years. The party needs to focus on presenting a “new deal” to the voters to tackle these inequities. It must promote an alternative vision of India anchored in tangible policy options and programmes to woo voters, especially young voters, and work on them continuously on the ground, and not just parachuting into a State a few months before elections.

As the Congress finds its feet on the ground, it must project its ideological position more clearly and consistently to take on the BJP. But that will not happen unless the party offers voters a “new deal” with inclusive and equitable rights-based programmes as its high watermark.

Bharat Jodo Yatra

The success so far of the Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY), currently under way from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, has shown that there is still space in the country for an inclusive and rights-based form of politics that the Congress represents and can tap into. The yatra has garnered considerable popular support in the southern States. But this public support has to extend to mobilisation for elections. Moreover, it remains to be seen how the yatra performs once it crosses Maharashtra and moves into the Hindi heartland. The BJY has articulated a narrative of unity, equity, and diversity; this must translate into an economic and political blueprint, and must be communicated in imaginative ways to make it acceptable to the vast numbers of people enchanted with the rhetoric of divisiveness and hate.

Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Distinguished Professor, Council for Social Development, New Delhi.

The Crux

• The three major challenges faced by the Indian National Congress are leadership crisis, organisational decay, and ideological ambiguity.
• The Congress has neither been able to broadcast its legacy and achievements, nor navigate the divisive politics of the Hindu Right.
• Mallikarjun Kharge’s election as AICC president is a breakthrough moment for the Congress but it is too early to assess its impact at the national level. 
• Although Rahul Gandhi has emerged as the most robust ideological opponent of the RSS/BJP and raised important questions on democracy, constitutionalism, and pluralism, these moves have failed to cut ice with the Hindu vote bank
• The Congress must project its ideological position more clearly and consistently to take on the BJP and also find ways of tackling institutionalised inequities and inequalities which have grown hugely in the last few years.
• The Bharat Jodo Yatra’s success has shown that there is still space in the country for an inclusive and rights-based form of politics that the Congress represents and can tap into.